Category Archives: Flash 9

Another week and another Nokia device makes its way onto the information super highway, this time courtesy of a BestBuy sales flyer. The rumor mill has begun speculating whether the black internet tablet pictured is the new Nokia N830 the WiMax equipped version of the N810 internet tablet. The N810 you will recall is the Linux based internet tablet that comes pre-installed with the AdobeÂ® FlashÂ® 9 player to support video and audio streaming, among other things :D, you can see the specs of the N810 here.

The N810 features, Wifi, Bluetooth, GPRS and a full slide out keyboard. The screen has a good looking resolution at 800×480, but the thing that grabbed my eye was this nugget.

The Nokia N810 is powered by maemo Linux based OS2008, updatable also on the Nokia N800, the previous internet tablet generation hardware. The Nokia N810 features a highly customizable user interface and contains various novelties such as a Mozilla based browser with Ajax and Adobe flash 9, Bluetooth headset support as well as enhanced video and audio features.

It is expected to start shipping mid November with an estimated retail price of 479 USD (excluding local taxes).

You can see some pictures of the new N810 over at the Nokia Press Site.Nokia N810 Photos

Marco has put a monumental amount of work into this book. Believe me the 900 hundred or more pages that you read are a slim account of the gargantuan task Marco undertook in documenting the extent of the Flex Application Framework.

I can honestly say I it was fantastic to read the original work. The thing that I found even more incredible as I inflicted my nit picking is that this huge technical resource was produced by Marco in English, not his native Italian. I know i would not be up to the task. Congratulations Marco.

{UPDATE 1}
What I have found use full and Interesting is a post over HERE, related to Flex 3. It provides a useful link if you want to get involved in the Pre-release.

Now on to the rant 😛
{/UPDATE 1}

{UPDATE 2}
After re-reading Ted’s post there is one section that i quite important to point out, that I missed.

The day you download Flex 3.0, you will be able to deploy 100% of the new features to the entire Flash Player 9 installed user base.

Of course we all want to know what those new features will actually be. Also though if the Flash 9 Player is going to be around a little longer than the previous player versions, will it mean we have to put up with its short comings a little longer too? Accessibility, Bi-Directional Support immediately spring to mind.
{/UPDATE 2}

Most of the flash blogosphere will have read the post here . I have to say I was left feeling a little fished in. There appeared to be little information actually about Flex 3.0 although there are an awful lot of mentions of both Flex 3.0 and also Flash player 9. In fact some of the information sounds down right wrong.

This is the first time Adobe or Macromedia has released a development toolset targeting a widely deployed Flash Player

Will this not be the Flash 9/Blaze IDE, which will surely be released well before Flex 3.0. I imagine Flash 9 will be targeting a widely deployed Flash 9 Player and the new ActionScript 3 standard. The clue would be Adobe releasing the AS3 update for flash 8 on Labs. What it would be accurate to say is;

This is the first time Adobe or Macromedia has released a development toolset, that hasn’t been released yet.

Scatter in some simple logical version statements, such.

When Flash Player 10 hits 90%, Flex should target Flash Player 10 in all future releases

Its a wonderful recipe for Google Keyword Candy. But has very little content.

Its great to get news of an official Adobe supported Ruby based RIA SDK. I have been looking at Ruby and Rails for a few months now, long after Stuart Eccles over at LiveRail.net said I should be looking at it. Those that saw his presentation at LFPUG will understand why. For those that didn’t see it, try and check out the video.

What I saw that evening was pretty incredible. Stuart had been raving about “6 Minute Apps” for some time, I couldn’t believe it when, as his presentation Stuart built an app there and then. From scratch. Database, server logic, flex front end. End to end database driven flex RIA. All that was needed was a bit of beatification and you would have been good to go.

What made it incredible? Well firstly Stuart wrote very little code, most of it was defined in the Ruby Scaffolds that get auto generated as part of a basic application framework. Secondly this was a real world useful app. the type you could imagine a client asking for. Thirdly, Stuart is neither a flash or flex developer. He has only really been looking at flex recently and yet quite plainly he is a man knows how to integrate seemingly disparate technologies in order to produce a useful product.

As Mike over at Flashgen.com and also Aral Balkan reports it seems someone is looking to contest the ridiculous Balthaser RIA patent that was reported a while ago by a number of Flash developers. I have also been contacted by Oliver Lorenz with regard to providing more information and certainly urge anyone that wants to beable to continue RIA development without the potential of infringing on this patent.

The issue I have with the patent is its broad and sweeping coverage of very common interface and application GUI design systems. As an example reading one portion of the “Summary of The Invention”.

When editing a component, the user may modify a number of features associated with a component including, but not limited to, the volume of an acoustic component, the link between a menu entry and an associated component, the font, font size, color, or effect of a text field, or the layout, size, transparency, rotation, color, position, or level of any graphical rich-media component. The user may modify these components by means of a slider bar or a textual input field. In addition, the user may modify the volume of a sound component by means of up and down volume buttons. The user may undo modifications made to a component’s parameters. The user may also modify the position of a graphical rich-media component by a graphical input field, by clicking and dragging said component, or by text fields. When the user modifies the position of a graphical rich-media component by means of clicking and dragging said component, said component may align itself to a grid point or a guide line. The user may also modify the style and the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of a component linked to a menu entry.

Unless I am mistaken the recently posted link to Netvibes would actually infringe on this part of the patent. In that the user can select ‘panes’ or ‘graphical rich-media components’ of the netvibes application and alter there position within the application by clicking and dragging them to a new position.

In this example, because there is no specific technology linked to the patent claim, any RIA in any technology, Flash, Ajax, Appolo, XUL Runner, HaXe, Sparkle, add any other future technology here….. These systems would all be in break of the patent claim.

And this is just ONE of the EIGHTY THREE different claims in this patent.

Very worrying I think any developer would agree. Everyone involved in Internet application development, in my opinion, should take a serious look at this patent. Think about ANY work they have done or seen in past. The work they are doing today. Then consider the possible implications of future networked development. If you know of anything that has been posted, exhibited or shown publicly that can bring this patent down, it is in every ones interest to make it known to strengthen the Magix reexamination.

And remember we are not just talking about flash applications or work here. If you remember or are aware of ANY online application, in any technology, be it DHTML, Director, Java or anything else. If it used any, all or even one of these systems to allow user interation then it may well be enough to show that Mr Neil Balthaser did not invent these systems, and certainly has not right to lay claim to doing so as he has in his patent application.

I am an avid user of eclipse and so this evening knocked together this simple Ant build.xml file. The file allows generation of AS3 class ASDocs from within the Eclipse IDE. I am not an Ant master, far from it, so if anyone has any ideas on making this more usefull feel free to leave a comment.

I placed this in a folder in the root of my project called docs. The final docs are produced to sub folders of the docs folder called output/AppDocs. A screen shot of output can be seen here.

The XMl source is below the fold along with a link to the raw build.xml file

As myself and Mike (flashgen.com) have mentioned previously we were heavily involved in Flash ‘way back in the day’. During the time we were cutting our teeth in flash’s infancy we were involved in some (IOHO) pretty slick projects. Now if you want those to be seen EVER again we need to get some release forms signed from 2 very specific companies in the UK.

If you can help us, or you know some one who might be able too PLEASE leave a comment. Let me know if you want it made public or not and I will abide your wishes. What is important is that myself or Mike (flashgen.com) can contact you some how to follow it up.

If you lead to the project going like I will personally buy you a BIG beers or six, and give you a great big hug (kisses optional).

The companies and or departments required are.

BBC Education Department — need to be able to sign release for Medicine Through Time Website. (circa 1998, Flash 3).
British Telecoms Education Department — need to be able to sign release for BT Time Trek Game. (circa 1998, Flash 3).

Remember this may be the only opportunity to see these historical examples of what us oldskoolers ‘bled our eyes on’.

It all started at university. Microsoft or MSN Australia I think it was, that was the first ‘flash’ movie I saw. And it changed everything I had seen on the web until then. Of course unlike everything else on the web at that time there was no way to see how they had done it. Or at least you would think 😉 . A few moments in a hex editor to remove those pesky 10th and 11th bytes, if memory serves, that was the ‘copy protection’ and we were off and de-compiling, perhaps the first flash de-compiler was actually UltraEdit? 😀

As you will have seen Mike Jones (FlashGen.com) and I are meeting to take notes, share war stories and generally reminisce the ‘Good OldSkool Days’. To find out what files we still have, and even which URLs are still live (Flash 3 (alpha) circa 1997/8 btw JD produced by Spooky & the Bandit – you may remember them :p)

The London Flash User Group site has now been updated. I will be giving my first ever public flash presentation. My chosen specialist subject will be localisation techniques for flash. This is something I have been banging my head against for some time, and as a result like to think I may be able to offer some nuggets of knowledge to someone out there in order to save them the same pain I have endured.

Previously I have mentioned concerns with regard to compatibility of Flash Player 9, ActionScript 3, Flex 2, and the recently released Flash 9 Preview. After digging around last night for information on how to get cracking on some Action Script 3 development I found this information on LiveDocs regarding the compatibility of the various flash SWF formats and ActionScript versions.

The only exception to this rule is that an ActionScript 2.0 SWF file can replace itself with an ActionScript 3.0 SWF file, as long as the ActionScript 2.0 SWF file hasn’t previously loaded anything into any of its levels. An ActionScript 2.0 SWF file can do this through a call to loadMovieNum(), passing a value of 0 to the level parameter.

In general, SWF files written in ActionScript 1.0 or 2.0 must be migrated if they are to work together with SWF files written in ActionScript 3.0. For example, say you created a media player using ActionScript 2.0. The media player loads various content that was also created using ActionScript 2.0. You cannot create new content in ActionScript 3.0 and load it in the media player. You must migrate the video player to ActionScript 3.0.

If, however, you create a media player in ActionScript 3.0, that media player can perform simple loads of your ActionScript 2.0 content.